by Jay Fox
At least I can say that I have enjoyed the time. It's just that an uneasy ambivalence is beginning to shadow me. I can't help but feel that I am neglecting a path that I am supposed to follow.
“Liquid brunch?” a familiar voice asks. The question floats through the air without a discernible focus, yet I somehow understand that it is directed at me. I cannot attach a face to the voice until I look up.
“Vinati,” awkwardly. “How have you been?”
She takes a step in my direction. “Besides working and pouring myself into bed just about every night, I'd say pretty good.” She smiles as she places a hand upon the rim of the table. “You're here by yourself?”
“I was having coffee with Professor Winchester,” I say as I once again remove my sunglasses.
“You were always such a kiss-ass,” she says to the sky. When her eyes return to the garden, she notices the absence of one coffee cup, let alone two. She removes her sunglasses to reveal a coy or alluring glance. “So where'd he go?”
“There was an incident involving a cat that really put him off,” I respond dryly. She tilts her head, which reveals an ear that is pierced in no less than eight locations. “Are you here by yourself, too?”
“I was supposed to meet a friend, but she's not here yet.” Her expression is not suppliant, but she is clearly embarrassed by the girl's absence. “Do you mind?” motioning to the vacant seat across from me.
We begin to catch up. This doesn't last that long. The little antecedent information that we have shared needs only scant revising. A paucity of words is dedicated to the last time we saw one another. An ignorant observer would presume that we shared a dance, and then somehow lost track of one another. Within a few moments we are imagining a multitude of scenarios that involve Ilkay. I guess there is no need to break ice when discussing him.
The daylight continues to rain down upon us, the tree in the garden creating only a weak cloak of shade. As the remaining fantasies in which we can place Ilkay begin to reach an asymptote, conversation becomes less caustic and more inquisitive. Commonalities begin to appear in places previously left unexamined. She is far more intelligent than I assumed. Perhaps that is one of those things we project onto beautiful people—i.e. if you're that good looking, it wouldn't be fair for you not to be a fool. We both note that a pianist in one of the units above the restaurant mimics Vince Guaraldi with brilliant accuracy. “That's 'Treat Street',” she exclaims. She looks mildly embarrassed before adding that her parents were both obsessed with Peanuts.
“Peanuts?”
“Every day my dad would read the comic strip. He really liked the television specials, too. He swears that's how he learned English.”
“Really? Are you a big fan of Guaraldi?” She nods her head enthusiastically, but says nothing as her lips are preoccupied by a straw. “The only songs I know by name are 'Linus and Lucy' and 'Young Man's Fancy',” I add.
The restaurant plays that Plain White T's song that seems too innocent to be popular. I look to see the tabby from before prowling about the yard cautiously. As she puts down her drink, Vinati looks to me, notices my eyes, and then slowly turns her attention to the cat. “Is this the guy who caused all the trouble earlier?” She smiles broadly in his direction. It's as though she has extra teeth.
“Probably,” I say without thinking. I look again. “Yeah, that's him all right.”
Eventually, the anonymous friend sends a text message. It's a cancellation, one that Vinati doesn't seem too dejected over. “She's such a fucking flake,” is added with a roll of the eyes.
The evening comes and goes.
Every teleologist will maintain that things happen for a reason. This is something of a tautology. The more militant members of this group will claim that everything happens for a reason. This is an argument that holds water only if one believes that the universe was created. Now, if one espouses this determinate, idealist view of the universe, it is typically sufficient for the belief in some transcendental sense of justice or karma or whatever you wish to call the incarnation (in the figurative sense) of an Ultimate Being, who forbade the reign of Darkness, and thought it necessary to bring about the Light (and, for the more scientifically-inclined deists, that this Being subsequently allowed for an inflaton field to expand—something like a holy spit bubble that is temporally concomitant to the Word). Perhaps it allows people to sleep a little better if they believe in a causal nexus, a Light both mysterious and conscious of every one of the particulates that dictate the passing of one moment to the next. Unfortunately, for those of us who have a hard time relating to, certainly with, this bodiless embodiment of will, wisdom, and supposed beneficence, which people call by an arbitrary name, we cannot accept such willed transcendence. We are forced to observe and attempt to explain only the adjuncts—the simple incidents without much significance when taken on their own—that serve to comprise the tapestry of experience we call existence. Being left to ponder context, we create what some call meaning.
I woke up in Williamsburg with my hand clutching Vinati's bare shoulder—the passing of a J, M, or Z train rattling the entire apartment as it passed. The dusk was beginning to inhabit the sky, and the brilliance of the sunset was made apparent by the orchid tints overtaking the fleecy cloud cover and the pale yellow light on the few regions of pavement where the neon lights did not fall.
And I was dazed. We had fallen asleep to Aeroplane Over the Sea (best rock album since Dark Side) only an hour previously, but it had lapsed into silence. The only sound in the apartment at that moment was the resonating hum of a box fan on the other side of the room. From the street, one could hear the music coming from the corner bodega—those bachatas with virtually no bass and a lead guitar that sounds almost like a banjo—and the younger men calling out from cars vibrating with synthesized drum tracks to groups of pudgy teenage girls strolling down Broadway. Some of the older generations of Puerto Ricans and Dominicans stood outside drinking beer out of paper bags, while the younger ones down the street preferred cocktails in red Solo cups. They called each other “son” and “nigga,” regardless of age or skin tone, and could be heard, with a striking clarity, even in Vinati's bedroom. House cats peered out onto the scene with indifference from windows without screens. Intractable old women looked with chagrin to nothing in particular, and they all seemed to have carts filled with black plastic bags and brilliantly-colored clothing. White girls and boys rode bicycles toward the Williamsburg Bridge in isolation. A unicyclist was accompanied by an unleashed hyena that tore apart several bags of garbage. A Chinese woman shouldered a black bag filled to capacity with cans and bottles. She looked like an ant hauling a blackberry—not struggling by any means; she moved with something like diligence or persistence, the endeavor appearing effortless. And everywhere was the scent of wet asphalt, cloaking the city in a soporific blanket. After I closed the blinds, but before I fell asleep, I heard a train coming from Manhattan.
11.3
“Where are you going?” she murmurs as she covers herself with a transparent sheet, her purple nipples erect from a sudden breeze. Moonlight cascades in through the slits in her blinds, casting the side of her face in nacreous sienna.
“I'm just going to the bathroom. I don't want to walk out naked. Your roommate…”
“My roommate is back in Pittsburgh for the next week,” she laughs. She closes her eyes. “I told you that last…well—” I look to her, soberly, for the first time in what feels like years. “What time is it?” as she shoots up. There is a clock in plain view; she squints, and then turns back to me. “It's one.” She's goes supine once again. I nod, laugh, and then begin my way down the hall of the railroad apartment and into the kitchen.
Her place has been renovated—white walls, new floors, kitchen appliances that do not contain any remnant of a meal purchased with food stamps. This is not to say that every trace of the former tenants has been removed. (There is always dust, dust that has become embedded in every crack in the floor, entrenched it
self so resolutely that it can elude even the most diligent of mops or sponges or brooms or any cleaning implement sent to remove it; and there it will remain until the boards in the floor themselves are wrenched from the framework that keeps them in place, only to be replaced by new boards that will absorb new dust. And the process of accumulation will immediately begin, continue, until someone once again decides to replace the floors, and on this occasion the enterprise will again begin anew, and this cycle will continue on forever, or at least until there is no more dust, no more waste. And yet this begs the far more important question, does it not? If there is no dust, then there is no shedding of skin, no refuse, no waste. If there is no dust, there can be no life.) The window frames have not been replaced, but the glass is a lot cleaner than it should be. Perhaps she lives in the only building in all of Brooklyn where the super (or someone hired by the landlord) cleans the outsides of the windows. The curtain undulates in the breeze like a flame dancing on the wick of a penny candle, a fluid motion so captivating that it's only a few seconds later that I realize that my penis is hanging out of the gate of my boxers, and that anyone living above the first floor of the building across the way has an unobstructed view of it. My apprehension eases as I see there are no forms in the windows, not even silhouettes against drawn blinds or curtains. The neighborhood is asleep except for a group of white kids in a nearby courtyard listening to the nasally and melancholy crooning of Colin Meloy, an odd songwriter who employs the word “sinew” more often than the author of a biology textbook. When the sound of yet another J, M, or Z train sends tremors throughout the building, it overwhelms even the most extroverted among the courtyard crew.
The bathroom holds few mysteries, even with the lights on. In my more suburban days, everything in the bathroom was tucked away in cupboards: the plunger, the toilet brush, medicines in the form of pills, liquids, and gel caps, towels, cologne, perfume, deodorant, antiperspirant, toothpaste, floss, moisturizer, topical ointments, tonics, hair gels, sprays, and mousses, bags of douche, cans of shaving cream or gel, razors, exfoliators, facial refiners, revitalizers, and rejuvinators. If the shower curtain wasn't drawn, one might get the chance to see washcloths, shampoos, conditioners, body scrubs, and an assortment of creams filled with substances that have been designed to perform duties somehow disparate from the act of cleansing. One is lucky to find anything more than soap, toilet paper, hand towels and tissue paper in a suburban bathroom, unless one begins to snoop. City bathrooms, however, are far more willing to divulge even their most embarrassing and repulsive secrets. Vinati's roommate has even left her herpes medication on display with name, address, and phone number readily available. I wonder if Upper St. Clair is nice.
I come back into the bedroom, Vinati bathing in the pacific and milky glow of the moon. I get back into bed. Vinati's fingers softly roll over the few hairs on my chest. We begin kissing again, slowly, without much tongue or need for theatrics. She glides on top of me, her hair pouring over my face. Her lips get lost in the chaos. We exchange positions. When I manage to push the hair away to look into her eyes—bright, clear, ethereal—I feel her long fingers sliding from my chest to my shoulders. Sweat permeates the air. Her lips approach yet again. Another J, M, or Z pulls into the nearby station. We once again embrace, tightly; I feel her thighs fall upon my hips. She grips the back of my head and kisses me with abandon.
12
By six in the morning the sun has already begun its parabolic journey, and the street is once again drenched in pastels. Vinati doesn't stir as I shift my weight; she only murmurs quietly. I am thinking clearly now. There is no hangover to speak of, though I do feel incapable of understanding what transpired the day before: brunch in the Village, the trip back to Williamsburg with that mild, daytime buzz, a few drinks at a bar on Union, a song with a whistling refrain, an overpriced veggie burger at Kellogg's, the complaint of too much money being spent, the trip to the bodega, the half-finished beers still sitting on her cabinet like discarded toys. I've never heard of the brand. From this angle it looks like “Lethe.”
It doesn't seem normal that the events followed in the manner that they did. I've been over this. Still, why did this beautiful woman decided to do all of this with me? Of all people. As straight men we are always seeking permission from women. When we finally receive consent, the reason rarely seems clear. For men, that's always been one of the paradoxes of sex: the more we think about it, the less enjoyable it is—especially for the women whom we are fortunate enough to be fucking. In fact, I even had to revert to an old trick that I had not utilized for a long time—as it had been a very long time since I had found myself in bed with someone. Some people think of baseball. Nerd that I am, I tend to see how many squared numbers I can compute. It's a pathetic practice, to be sure, but it is certainly far less pathetic than having a premature mess on your hands…well, actually the fact that it's not going to end up on your hands is exactly the reason why every second is so valuable.
What struck me as so odd, however, was the countenance worn by Vinati during, and particularly after, the act that is colloquially known as making love. (It is a conceptually spurious outlook on sex, as love has its origins around and within sex, though copulation is by no means explicitly reserved for creating the fog of love in two people: it is responsible only for galvanizing those sentiments, assuming that they are there. Love is not restricted to the bedroom; it can be created and made epic with the most simplistic of acts—I've seen lovers at their most tender sharing a box of fried chicken in Cobble Hill Park, huddled together on a bench awaiting the three am D train, passing a cigarette back and forth in the din of Times Square. This is not to say that sexuality and eroticism obfuscate the purity of love; it's simply that these two are components of love, necessary but not sufficient.) In the light of the moon I watched her surrender to the sensation of tiny death—the deeper breaths, the tightening of her thighs around my hips, the increase in speed with which she forced herself up and then down, the ferocity with which she bucked back and forth, swirling, moaning, speaking in tongues or Hindi or some language with a purely internal lexicon. I watched her, drank in the sight of her surrender, and I noticed that her expression did not appear to be a display of ecstasy or even pleasure. No, it seemed to be a look of terror—terror, perhaps, that I was both capable of producing and witness to the Big Moment.
As I lay watching her sleep, I cannot help but think about this. I try to write it off, to once again lose myself in the presence of her naked body. Cast your fate to the wind—you're in love, Charlie Brown. No, not love. The potential for love. Maybe.
I had watched Connie, my previous girlfriend, sleep (Gabrielle with pillow, with blanket, in twin bed recumbent, alone). It isn't one of those things that I like to admit; it certainly isn't something that I have revealed to her or those who know her. It was a reflex. It is a reflex. Some may stare to the ocean to find that moment of peace; personally, I see it in the tranquility of others, a form of empathy that is somewhat rare because it doesn't concern happiness or misery. I continue staring to Vinati for a long while and anticipate that she is soon to wake up (because they always seem to sense your eyes); yet she remains defiantly asleep, the halcyon moment uninterrupted.
After a few minutes, I lift myself and place my feet upon the cool wood floor. I look upon the heaps of clothing with its myriad shadows succumbing to the gray light of dawn-through-the-blinds; soon I am combing through the articles in this mound hoping to find something with which to cover myself. A towel is the best option available. I make my way to the bathroom.
A condom greets me in the toilet. It's a nice reminder of the previous night's experience, one that I will probably come to revisit frequently. In conventional parlance, it has been placed in the spank bank. Then again, it may come to pass that sex with her becomes the norm for the coming months, years. Will that make it any less special? Is that what happened with Connie? Is that something that all men are doomed to feel? Is that something that all people a
re doomed to feel?
It's difficult to establish any clear reference point as to how Vinati sees this whole thing. Ilkay has said “She's weird with relationships.” What that means is anyone's guess. He wouldn't elaborate. Was it a need for a quick release or a desire for something of substance? From here will we attempt to create a symbiotic relationship founded on a mutual love for one another? Will we engage in one of those shallow, give-and-take enterprises, complete with poorly contrived histrionics arising out of that tedium that is known so eloquently as settling? Or will we remain two autonomous drifters who just happened to share a bed for a night, who will never share so much as an earnest conversation ever again? Posing successive questions is certainly a nuisance, isn't it?
These are clearly not the only possibly scenarios; they do seem to be the most likely, however. Still, it is probably not the best idea to try to divine the future of the relationship, if any, from the Coney Island whitefish lazily floating around the bowl. So I set it free, down into the nether regions to live with its brethren. They swim there, the whitefish, trading stories and living in the past (it's an existence not at all unlike the image of heaven as painted by the boring and the dim). Not that it's all fun and games down there—at least not since a good portion of the croc population became addicted to crack. It wasn't their fault, though—the crocs, that is. They are instinctively drawn to bright-colored objects; and the balloons that started appearing during the eighties—sometimes due to hasty flushing, sometimes due to an impending bust—were bound to attract some attention. So it was an accident—the crack addiction. The attacks upon the whitefish, on the other hand, are mistakes. They, the crocs, are not known for their brilliant sight, and, to be fair, the difference between a balloon and a condom is fairly insignificant until one considers the uses the two serve. But this has nothing to do with Vinati and the situation on this side of the toilet. A beautiful woman is naked in the next room, and I have no idea how to maintain either of those temporary, perhaps temporal, qualities.